The Yard Society

If anyone really wants to understand North America, and what makes it different from most of the rest of the world today, there is a vital component to that understanding that has nothing to do with technology or democracy. North America could literally be renamed "Yardland".

The people of North America, particularly those of the suburbs, insist on having spacious front yards and back yards adjoining their homes. I have not yet seen an article detailing just how profoundly this affects the entire society, so I decided to write such an article myself. This, more than anything else, is what makes the continent different from the rest of the world.

When homes have yards, it means that everything must be further apart. This brings us to what we could call "The Automobile Spiral". Having everything further apart means that car ownership is a practical necessity. This, in turn, means that everything must be still further apart because cars require a driveway at the home to park in, wider streets to accommodate them and, highways for through traffic to avoid local congestion.

Most of all, cars mean that there must be parking lots wherever people will be driving to. It is these parking lots that shape the forms of our cities like nothing else. Urban areas balloon with parking lot space so that cities tend to sprawl into one another, rather than having much of a sharp definition.

None of this takes place if buses, streetcars, bicycles and, walking can accomplish daily transportation. But that is only practical without yards. Levittown, New York is considered as the prototype postwar suburb and was followed by a development in Pennsylvania with the same name. Those suburbs were named after the builder, but could just as easily have been named "Yardtown".

Here is a map link if you want to have a look: www.maps.google.com . Compare the suburbs of North America with older cities in other countries, where most homes do not have much of a yard.

The Yard Society cannot be found anywhere, it requires a large country with a lot of open space on which to establish all of the yards. There are economic requirements also, a middle class that can afford the homes with yards and the cars that they make necessary. Obviously, there could be no yard society without modern technology.

Postwar Britain had it's own version of suburbanization with the so-called "New Towns", building towns where there had been none before. Most turned out well, but there was not the available space that there was in North America and it did not develop into the same kind of Yard Society.

Individual yards replaced the town square of days gone by. Yards became an extension of personal space. The emphasis was on the individual, rather than the group, and apartment buildings seem to be rarely built with communal courtyards anymore. It is no secret that ethnic groups which live in pre-suburban areas of cities tend to be more communal that suburbanites.

The entire economy is shaped by those backyards and front yards. The auto industry quickly became one of the most important. The oil industry grew alongside it to provide fuel for the cars that were made necessary by the distance which yards put between everything. Global politics was built around making sure that we had the supply of foreign oil that we needed for the cars that we needed because of the yards. Burning this oil for fuel brought us into the peril of global warming.

Building and maintaining the necessary highways was yet another major industry. The Urban Renewal movement, from the 1950s to the 1970s, was the reshaping of the older sections of the city to accommodate the cars. New developments were designed for cars, rather than people, such as drive-through fast food restaurants.

The cars that we needed because of the yards affected the health of the general population. Driving cars, instead of walking or bicycling as in days past, is sedentary. That brought about more of diseases like diabetes, heart disease, obesity and, certainly increases the chances of developing cancer. The sedentary way of life brought about all manner of exercise gyms and routines, as well as an entire diet industry. All of it was ultimately rooted in our yards, as is the typical grid street pattern of cities.

The yards themselves have had a great effect on the culture from pools and barbecues to ease of pet ownership, as well as the fence and lawn care industries.

It is yards, more than anything else, that makes North America different from the rest of the world.